Colombia commemorates the seventh year of the Peace Agreement with the FARC

2023-11-24 23:14:22

“Today we are taking stock of seven years since the signing, and like everything in life, one of lime and one of sand,” said former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) during the commemoration ceremony held at the Center of Memory of Bogotá, in which the former leader of the guerrilla, Rodrigo Londoño, known as “Timochenko” was also present.

On November 24, 2016, Santos and Londoño signed the agreement at the Teatro Colón in Bogotá that marked “the end of a war between the most powerful and oldest insurgency in the Western Hemisphere and the Colombian Government.”

“What has been the good thing about this agreement? Its importance, the recognition because it was the first agreement that put the victims at the center of the negotiations, the recognition of the victims before even signing the peace,” Santos highlighted, during the act, in which Londoño was given the voice.

The agreement included an entire mechanism for recognition, truth and reconciliation, such as the Truth Commission, which presented its final report last year, or the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), an organization for restorative justice.

The former president won the Nobel Peace Prize after that and Colombia has been an example of peace; Santos has received calls from Ukraine, Ethiopia and Afghanistan to share experiences, but the truth is that the implementation of what was agreed upon – which not only involved the disarmament of the guerrillas but also commitments to distribute land and compensate victims – is far from being achieved. perfect.

Implementation is progressing very slowly

However, this “ambitious and comprehensive” agreement, as Santos defined it, has been dragging on “slowly” in its implementation. According to the Kroc Institute of the University of Notre Dame (USA), which the parties commissioned independent monitoring, estimates that as of June 2023 of the 578 commitments contained in the agreement, 13% are unstarted; 36% in minimal status, 20% in intermediate status and 31% have been completed.

Since the signing, which involved a very rapid disarmament of some 13,000 men and women, 406 former guerrillas have been murdered, and the reconfiguration of the conflict has brought an increase in massacres and the murder of 1,015 human rights defenders, according to the organization Somos Defensores.

The arrival to the Government in 2018 of the now former president Iván Duque, whose party opposed the signature and made the “no” triumph in the peace referendum, meant a stalemate in the implementation and the arrival of Gustavo Petro brought a new hope for it to be resumed, something that has not finished happening.

Call to Petro to implement the Peace Agreement

Last year, in four months of the Petro Government, only 1% progress was made, according to Santos, in the implementation, and the former president also criticized that at the moment “there is no structure” or “budget” in the Government to land peace .

Petro, who since his arrival to the Presidency has promoted a policy of ‘total peace’ to negotiate with all the armed and criminal groups in the country, did not attend the event, even though he was expected, so Santos took the opportunity to ask him more commitment to this agreement reached in 2016.

“That total peace should not overshadow the implementation of the peace process with the FARC because it is fundamental, necessary, so that any other peace can prosper; if it is not implemented, any other peace attempt dies,” stressed Santos, who believes that If Petro took the task of implementing it, “this Government will go down in history.”

In that sense, Santos assured that the “worst strategic mistake” of the current Government has been giving a “license of marque” to the dissident groups that emerged from the guerrilla.

“I believe that the worst strategic mistake that this Government has made was to give a license to the intention of the so-called dissidents to present themselves as the FARC-EP, as the General Staff of the FARC-EP,” he said.

Despite everything, the former president was optimistic: “We are happy because despite the difficulties, all the obstacles – because making peace is more difficult than making war – this agreement that we signed seven years ago continues.”